Dear Eric: I am 80 and my daughter is 44. I am a retired professional, and my daughter, a college graduate and business owner, gets offended when I question anything she does.

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She’s considering going back to school to enhance her marketability and when she showed me a counseling program she was interested in, I noticed one of the required courses was statistics. When I asked her if she realized that it is a high-level math course, she became insulted.

Her major in college was graphic design, and she always avoided math classes once she left high school.

What should I have said/done? I didn’t want her to get into a program where she might not be prepared for the coursework.

Please advise. This has happened in other instances, and I just seem to keep unintentionally hurting her feelings.

– Concerned Parent

Dear Parent: I know your intentions were good and you didn’t want to insult your daughter, but I fear you’re still seeing her for the person she was at 18 or 21, rather than the adult she is now.

Asking her if she realized the math course was high-level not-so-subtly implies that she hasn’t thought this through, even though she likely has.

I know you want to protect her, but she has matured and changed; she can protect herself.

Part of this is a growing pain in the relationship you’re building with your adult child. It happens.

The next time you feel the impulse to warn, or question, take a step back and use it as an opportunity to marvel at the person your daughter has become.

With this math course, for instance, you could have been (and still can be) impressed that someone who avoided math 20 years ago is now voluntarily taking on statistics in the interest of advancing her career.

When in doubt, tell her you’re proud of her and you’re rooting for her always. That’ll go a lot further.

Dear Eric: I am a man in my 50s who has fulfilled a 10-year dream: I have written, produced and starred in a comedy web series.

I worked diligently on the scripting, put up my own funding, and hired professional lighting, sound and editing.

Three weeks after it was cut, I uploaded it to a popular comedy website. To my dismay, I received some very negative, even cruel comments. Fortunately, I also received positive feedback.

But what shocked me is that three or four of my closest friends reacted with a shrug. They weren’t mean, but they couldn’t muster up much enthusiasm. Comments like “It’s not my cup of tea” or “I see what you were trying for” hurt me.

Another friend advised me to post to other sites to expand viewing, but, frankly, I find myself becoming very chilly to those friends who didn’t love it.

Worse than feeling hurt by these friends is the realization that I’m a middle-aged baby for resenting their honest opinions. I believe in the series and want to take it to a larger site, but I’m concerned about my thin-skinned, childish feelings.

Should I keep going with it, or accept it as a failure and move on? Meanwhile, I’m avoiding two of my friends simply for giving me their honest input.

– Comedy and Errors

Dear Comedy: If you can stand a little more honest input, I’d encourage you to be kinder to yourself.

It’s perfectly normal – and not at all babyish – to experience bruised feelings when people don’t like our work. Comments online can be especially harsh because people often forget – or willfully ignore – that there’s a human being on the other side of the computer.

You make your art because it brings you joy, and you want to bring joy to others. It’s hard to then pivot when the art becomes a commodity that’s getting pulled apart and critiqued by strangers. Or, as has happened to you, by friends.

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A hard truth about making art is that our friends and loved ones may not always be our target audience. I wish your friends had been able to commend you for the effort, even if they weren’t bowled over by your punchlines. But don’t let that stop you from feeling proud.

You’ve done the hard part – you created something out of nothing, found the funding, put together the talent, and produced your dream. You’ve already reached some members of your ideal audience. Don’t forget that positive feedback.

Forgive your friends for not having the right words, and when you upload the video to the bigger site consider not reading the comments or asking someone else to summarize them. Even when the feedback is great, online comments can really leech the pleasure out of doing something. Plus, unless that feedback is going to help you make the next thing, you’ve got to ask yourself what it’s really for.

Send questions to R. Eric Thomas at [email protected] or P.O. Box 22474, Philadelphia, PA 19110. Follow him on Instagram @oureric and sign up for his weekly newsletter at rericthomas.com.